Lely robots such as the Juno 100, 150, and the Discovery 90/SW all have what is called a printed circuit board or PCB for short. This PCB is the nerve center of the entire robot. It sends and receives signals from various parts of the robot, from motor current to gyroscope heading, and probably most importantly, stores the routes.
Imagine one morning you find your robot not at the charger, so you go and look for it and find it powered off in a corner of the barn. You grab your tablet and try to connect to your robot, and no luck! You try to power it back up and once again… nothing! What to do now? Call the technician line? Or decide you are going to pop the PCB housing cover off and have a look to see if it’s something easy, like a loose connection. To your surprise, you find your robot's circuit board drenched in water and corrosion everywhere. Uh oh! The technician comes out and confirms your worst fear: the PCB needs replacing and depending on if routes have been backed up, new routes will need to be made. This just went from an average day to quite an expensive one, not cool!
So, what can be done? Surely there must be a better way! There is, thankfully! The best thing you can do to protect your robots is firstly to consider how old and what kind of environment it’s in. If you are washing your robot or it spends time outside or in a manure environment, take a good look at that grey box on your robot. Are there flakes of powder coating chipping off? Consider removing the top lid to inspect the innards. If you see bubbling or flakes of powder coating scattered everywhere? I hate to say it, but your PCB days are numbered!
There is a stainless-steel PCB housing update available for a fraction of the cost of a new PCB and all the labor involved to get your robot up and running again. It's stainless, so no corrosion to be had there and better waterproof cable grommets.
If you are wanting to protect your wallet and your robot, it would be a great idea to make a route back-up on your tablet or e-link. To do this, select ROUTES and scroll down to BACK-UP and save them to your device. That allows the technician to download those routes back onto a new board should the worst happen.
Feel free to call our team at 1-866-601-5532! Press '2' to get a technician from the feeding department and we will be more than happy to help you with any questions you may have.
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